1. Field of Invention
This invention relates generally to a shelf extender making it possible to enlarge the capacity of a supermarket shelf to which the extender is attached to store and display additional merchandise, and more particularly to an all-purpose shelf extender that comes in the form of a flat blank that can readily be erected to create a transparent, three-dimensional open bin whose rear wall may be adhesively secured to holding clips receiving in the existing price channel at the front edge of the shelf to be extended.
2. Status of Prior Art
The modern supermarket carries many hundreds of items such as canned and bottled foods and beverages, dry cereals, boxed soaps, toothpaste, cosmetics and drugs as well as sundry other articles of merchandise. The interior architecture of the typical supermarket is such as to facilitate the flow therethrough of consumer-propelled shopping carts. To this end, the supermarket layout is arranged to define parallel aisles, each of which is banked by shelves on which various items of merchandise are stored and displayed. In this way, a customer pushing a shopping cart along any aisle in the store can see the merchandise displayed on the shelves and transfer bottles, boxes or cans of merchandise he wishes to purchase to his shopping cart.
Each item of merchandise usually has its price marked thereon or it carries a UPC marking from which the price can be determined by a computer terminal at the checkout counter. In order that the consumer know the price without having to remove the item from the shelf to examine the price marking thereon, the edge of each shelf is provided with a price channel which runs the length of the shelf. Inserted in this channel are cards having printed thereon the price of the item on the shelf directly above the cart. Since supermarket prices are subject to frequent change as a result of special sales and other factors, the advantage of a price channel is that it lends itself to easy replacement of one price card by another. The present invention, as will become later evident, exploits the existence of this price channel for a purpose having nothing to do with pricing.
Though the typical modern supermarket can accommodate hundreds of different products and has an enormous overall shelf capacity, in many cases this capacity still falls short of the store's requirements under certain special circumstances. Manufacturers in our highly competitive economy continue to add to their product line and to introduce new items requiring additional shelf space. Many of these new products, at the time they are first introduced to the market, are heavily promoted in the media, so that the demand therefor may surge, possibly to the detriment of competitive products. In order for the supermarket to satisfy a demand for a heavily-promoted item, it is important that shelf space be found for this item whose placement takes into account that the shopper is likely to be looking for this particular item.
It is important, therefore, that whatever shelf space is allocated to the new item be conspicuous so that a shopper is not forced to hunt for it among the multitude of other items available in the supermarket. In a supermarket, the shelves are in a vertical array, one above the other, and if an item is placed on the lowermost shelf, it may be overlooked by the shopper who is best able to see items which appear on a shelf at the shopper's eye level. The natural tendency of a supermarket merchandiser is to place those items having the greatest current sales appeal on the most conspicuous shelves and to relegate those of lesser interest to other shelves. Hence the supermarket merchandiser is faced not only with the problem of finding shelf space for a new item, but also with the effective placement of this shelf.
In recent years, in order to provide additional shelf space, shelf expanders have been devised in the form of open wire trays adapted to clamp onto the front edge of the shelf. Such shelf extenders are relatively expensive and they are fairly difficult to attach to a shelf or to be detached therefrom. Moreover, these known types of shelf-expanders also require a substantial amount of storage space which in a typical supermarket is in short supply. The number of shelf expanders in use at a given time depends on changing circumstances, so that while on a particular day no more than, say, five such expanders may be in use, at other times more than thirty or forty may be needed. To meet these changing requirements, the supermarket must keep in storage a large number of shelf expanders, and these require a substantial amount of storage space.
Another drawback of known types of shelf expanders is that the means used to attach to the expanders for the front edge of the shelf may interfere with the removal of items resting on this shelf or partially block these items from view.